Friday, July 15, 2016

Keswick's Biblical Strengths: where Keswick is Correct, in an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 4 of 4

Warfield
embraced and warmly advocated the life of faith as the distinctive mark of true
piety, affirming the centrality of living by faith not only in the New
Testament, but in the Old also:

[F]rom the very beginning the distinctive
feature of the life of the pious is that it is a life of faith[.] . . . Thus
the first recorded human acts after the Fall . . . are expressive of trust in
God’s promise . . . in the great promise of the Seed (Gen. 3:15). Similarly,
the whole story of the Flood is so ordered as to throw into relief, on the one
hand, the free grace of God in His dealings with Noah (Gen. 6:8, 18, 8:1, 21,
9:8), and, on the other, the determination of Noah’s whole life by trust in God
and His promises (Gen. 6:22, 7:5, 9:20). The open declaration of the
faith-principle of Abraham’s life (Gen. 15:6) only puts into words, in the case
of him who stands at the root of Israel’s whole national and religious
existence, what not only might also be said of all the patriarchs, but what
actually is most distinctly said both of Abraham and of them through the medium
of their recorded history. The entire patriarchal narrative is set forth with
the design and effect of exhibiting the life of the servants of God as a life
of faith, and it is just by the fact of their implicit self-commitment to God
that throughout the narrative the servants of God are differentiated from
others. This does not mean, of course, that with them faith took the place of
obedience: an entire self-commitment to God which did not show itself in
obedience to Him would be self-contradictory, and the testing of faith by
obedience is therefore a marked feature of the patriarchal narrative. But it
does mean that faith was with them the precondition of all obedience. The
patriarchal religion is essentially a religion, not of law but of promise, and
therefore not primarily of obedience but of trust; the holy walk is
characteristic of God’s servants (Gen. 5:22, 24, 6:9, 17:1, 24:40, 48:15), but
it is characteristically described as a walk “with God”; its peculiarity
consisted precisely in the ordering of life by entire trust in God, and it
expressed itself in conduct growing out of this trust (Gen. 3:20, 4:1, 6:22,
7:5, 8:18, 12:4, 17:23, 21:12, 16, 22). The righteousness of the patriarchal
age was thus but the manifestation in life of an entire self-commitment to God,
in unwavering trust in His promises. . . . The piety of the Old Testament thus
began with faith.[1]

Indeed, “faith . . . on
the human side is the fundamental element of religion, as grace is on God’s
side.”[2]Consequently,
the Christian must continually trust and look to God through Christ in every
area of his daily life, for not to do so is “practical atheism.”Believers are to commit all their cares,
burdens, and needs to the Lord, trusting that He will take care of them:

There is a formal atheism of opinions and
words and reasonings which declares that there is no God and seeks to
sophisticate the understanding into believing that there is none. This the
Bible describes as an open folly: the fool has said in his heart, There is no
God. But even when the lip and the mind behind the lip are true to right reason
and confess that there is a God who rules the world and to whom we are
responsible in our every thought and word and deed, there is often a practical
atheism that lives as if there were no God. Formal atheism denies God;
practical atheism is guilty of the possibly even more astounding sin of
forgetting the God it confesses. How many men who would not think of saying even
in their hearts, There is no God, deny Him practically by ordering their lives
as if He were not? And even among those who yield, in their lives, a practical
as well as a formal acknowledgment of God, many yet manage, practically, to
deny in their lives that this God, acknowledged and served, is the Lord of all
the earth. How prone we are to limit and circumscribe the sphere in which we
practically allow for God! We feel His presence and activity in some things but
not in others; we seek His blessing in some matters but not in others; we look
for His guidance in some affairs but not in others; we can trust Him in some
crises and with some of our hopes but not in or with others. This too is a
practical atheism. And it is against all such practical atheism that [Matthew
6:33] enters its protest. . . . It protests against men reckoning in anything
without God.

How are we to
order our lives? How are we to provide for our households—or, for our own
bodily wants? Is it true that we can trust the eternal welfare of our souls to
God and cannot trust to Him the temporal welfare of our bodies? Is it true that
He has provided salvation for us at the tremendous cost of the death of His
Son, and will not provide food for us to eat and clothes for us to wear at the
cost of the directive word that speaks and it is done? Is it true that we can
stand by the bedside of our dying friend and send him forth into eternity in
good confidence in God, and cannot send that same friend forth into the world
with any confidence that God will keep him there? O, the practical atheism of
many of our earthly cares and earthly anxieties! Can we not read the lessons of
the birds of heaven and the lilies of the field which our Father feeds and
clothes? What a rebuke these lessons are to our practical atheism, which says,
in effect, that we cannot trust God for our earthly prosperity but must bid Him
wait until we make good our earthly fortunes before we can afford to turn to
Him. How many men do actually think that it is unreasonable to serve God at the
expense of their business activity? To give Him their first and most energetic
service? How many think it would be unreasonable in God to put His service
before their provision for themselves and family? How many of us who have been
able to “risk” ourselves, do not think that we can “risk” our families in God’s
keeping? How subtle the temptations! But, here our Lord brushes them all away
in the calm words, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness;
land all these things shall be added unto you.” Is this not a rebuke to our
practical atheism?[3]

The need to daily—indeed,
constantly—live by faith, looking always to the Lord in confident trust, is by
no means a Keswick distinctive.It is a
glorious truth held in common by classic Baptist and old evangelical piety, one
fervently proclaimed for many centuries before the origin of the Higher Life
theology.

Warfield
emphasized the need for surrender and consecration to Christ.He rejoiced that the Bible revealed to
him “a Christ to love, to trust and to follow, a Christ without us the ground
of our salvation, a Christ within us the hope of glory.”[4]Indeed, Warfield
taught that “[s]urrender and consecration . . . are the twin key-notes
of the Christian life.”[5]Divine
blessing in Christian ministry depends upon surrender and consecration, and in
proportion as they are emphasized may the Christian hope for success:“[O]ur life as ministers of the Gospel is
nothing else but one side of our Christian life—the flower and fruit of our
Christian life—[so] surrender and consecration must be made also its notes. It
is in direct proportion as they are made its key-notes that we may hope for
success in our ministry[.]”[6]Surrender and consecration can by no means be
divorced from faith—they are inextricably bound together:“[T]he two essential elements of all religion
[are] surrender and consecration—the passive and active aspects of that faith
which on the human side is the fundamental element of religion, as grace is on
God’s side, when dealing with sinful men.”[7]Warfield also recognized the absolute need
for the strength of the Holy Spirit to enable surrender and consecration; God
the Spirit’s work is always primary and initiatory, while the believer’s
response is dependent upon Divine working.Therefore, on account of the believer’s weakness, constant dependence
upon God, prayer to Him, and constant empowerment from the Holy Ghost is
absolutely necessary:

Thus, then, the Spirit helps our weakness. By His
hidden, inner influences He quickens us to the perception of our real need; He
frames in us an infinite desire for this needed thing; He leads us to bring
this desire in all its unutterable strength before God; who, seeing it within
our hearts, cannot but grant it, as accordant with His will. Is not this a very
present help in time of trouble? As prevalent a help as if we were miraculously
rescued from any danger? And yet a help wrought through the means of God’s own
appointment, that is, our attitude of constant dependence on Him and our prayer
to Him for His aid? And could Paul here have devised a better encouragement to
the saints to go on in their holy course and fight the battle bravely to the
end?[8]

Indeed, as Warfield emphasized
that believers are always weak and in need of the enablement of the Spirit, so
he taught that Christians are always unworthy and always in continual need of
God’s grace.Anything good in them
whatsoever must be ascribed, not to themselves, but to grace alone, received
from the Holy Spirit alone.“Every
grace of the godly life . . . [is] a fruit of His working.”[9]Warfield explained:

It belongs to the very essence of the type of
Christianity propagated by the Reformation that the believer should feel
himself continuously unworthy of the grace by which he lives. At the center of
this type of Christianity lies the contrast of sin and grace; and about this
center everything else revolves. This is in large part the meaning of the
emphasis put in this type of Christianity on justification by faith. It is its
conviction that there is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our
earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always
be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is
not true of us only “when we believe.” It is just as true after we have
believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ
does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him
or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces
or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always on His “blood
and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are
or have or do that can take His place, or that can take a place along with Him.
We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure
grace. Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in
Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners”: “miserable sinners”
saved by grace to be sure, but “miserable sinners” still, deserving in
ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the
Reformers took, and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned
from the Reformers to take, toward the relation of believers to Christ.[10]

Since every aspect of salvation,
whether justification, sanctification, or glorification, arises purely from the
grace decreed by the Father, purchased by the Son, and applied by the Holy
Ghost, the believer’s spiritual strengthening is not a self-dependent moralism,
but is sourced in the Son and wrought by the Holy Spirit through the
instrumentality of faith:

[S]piritual strengthening is contingent
on, or let us rather say, is dependent on the abiding presence of Christ in
their hearts. The indwelling Christ is the source of the Christian’s spiritual
strength. This is, of course, not to set aside the Holy Spirit. But he has read
his New Testament to little purpose who would separate the Holy Spirit and
Christ: Christ abides in the heart by the Spirit. The indwelling of the Holy
Ghost is the means of the indwelling of Christ and the two are one and the same
great fact. We are strengthened in the inner man with might by the Holy Spirit,
because by the operation of the Spirit in our hearts, Christ abides there—thus
and not otherwise. And here we learn then the source of the Christian’s
strength. Christ is the ultimate source. His indwelling is the ground of all
our strength. But it is only by the Spirit—the executive of the Godhead in this
sphere too—that Christ dwells in the heart. It is the Spirit that strengthens
us, and He so strengthens us that He gives us “might” in our inner man. The way
He does this is by forming Christ within us.

The Apostle [Paul]
is one of the most fecund writers extant, and thus it happens that he does not
leave the matter even there. It is by the Spirit that Christ dwells in us—that
is the objective fact. But there is a subjective fact too, and the Apostle does
not fail to touch it—it is by our faith, too, that Christ dwells in us. “That
Christ may abide in your hearts by your faith,” he says. He does not say “by
faith” merely, though he might well have said that, and it would have covered
the whole necessary idea. But, in his habitual fullness of expression, he puts
in the article,[11] and thus implies that he recognizes their
faith as already existent. They are Christians, they already believe, Christ is
already dwelling in them by faith; he prays that He may abide in them by their
faith. The stress is everywhere laid on continuance. May God strengthen your
inner man, he says, by His Spirit. That is to say, he adds, may that Christ
whom ye have received into your hearts by faith abide continuously in your
hearts by that faith of yours. As much as to say, Christ is brought into your
hearts by the Holy Ghost. He abides there by that Holy Ghost. May God thus
continually strengthen your hearts by His Spirit, and that, even with might. I
pray to Him for it, for it is He that gives it. But do not think, therefore,
that you may lose hold on Christ. It is equally true that He abides in your
hearts by your faith. When faith fails, so do the signs of His presence within:
the strengthening of the Spirit and the steady burning of the flame of faith
are correlative. As well expect the thermometer to stand still with the
temperature varying as the height of your faith not to index the degree of your
strength. Your strength is grounded in the indwelling Christ, wrought by the
Spirit by means of faith.

Thus we have laid
before us the sources of the Christian’s strength. It is rooted in Christ, the
Christ within us, abiding there by virtue of the Spirit’s action quickening and
upholding faith in us. And only as by the Spirit our faith is kept firm and
clear, will Christ abide in us, and will we accordingly be strong in the inner
man.[12]

Evangelical piety has long
recognized the necessity of surrender and consecration to Christ, the
believer’s continual weakness and need for grace, and the supernatural Divine
source of all spiritual growth in the Triune God.Keswick theology did not contribute any new
Scriptural teaching or new positive emphasis in relation to these blessed
truths.

Warfield
also recognized, because of the absolute dependence of the Christian on God and
His grace, the supreme importance of prayer.The believer is to live in perpetual communion with God and to seek Him
earnestly in prayer:

The thing for us to do is to pray without ceasing;
once having come into the presence of God, never to leave it; to abide in His
presence and to live, steadily, unbrokenly, continuously, in the midst of
whatever distractions or trials, with and in Him. God grant such a life to
every one of us! . . .

We must not undervalue the
purely subjective or reflex effects of prayer. They are of the highest benefit
to us. Much less must we undervalue the objective effects of prayer. In them
lies the specific meaning of that exercise of prayer which we call petition.
But the heart of the matter lies in every case in the communion with God which
the soul enjoys in prayer. This is prayer itself, and in it is summed up what
is most blessed in prayer. If it be man’s chief end to glorify God and enjoy
Him for ever, then man has attained his end, the sole purpose for which he was
made, the entire object for which he exists, when he enters into communion with
God, abides in His presence, streaming out to Him in all the emotions, I do not
say appropriate to a creature in the presence of his Maker and Lord,
apprehended by him as the Good Lord and Righteous Ruler of the souls of men, but
appropriate to the sinner who has been redeemed by the blood of God’s own Son
and is inhabited by His Spirit and apprehends his Maker as also his Saviour,
his Governor as also his Lover, and knows the supreme joy of him that was lost
and is found, was dead and is alive again,—and all, through the glory of God’s
seeking and saving love. He who attains to this experience has attained all
that is to be attained. He is absorbed in the beatific vision. He that sees God
shall be like Him. . . .

If there is a God
who sits aloft and hears and answers, do we not see that the attitude into
which prayer brings the soul is the appropriate attitude which the soul should
occupy to Him, and is the truest and best preparation of the soul for the
reception of His grace? The soul in the attitude of prayer is like the flower
turned upwards towards the sky and opening for the reception of the life-giving
rain. What is prayer but an adoring appearing before God with a confession of
our need and helplessness and a petition for His strength and blessing? What is
prayer but a recognition of our dependence and a proclamation that all that we
dependent creatures need is found abundantly and to spare in God, who gives to
all men liberally and upbraids not? What is prayer but the very adjustment of
the heart for the influx of grace? Therefore it is that we look upon the
prayerful attitude as above all others the true Christian attitude—just because
it is the attitude of devout and hopeful dependence on God.[13]

Warfield called believers to a
passionate and intimate life of fellowship with their Triune Redeemer in
prayer.Conscious, direct, and intimate
fellowship with the Triune God through the Holy Spirit, and immediate
dependence on Him, is the distinguishing mark that separates evangelical piety
from false systems such as sacerdotalism and which gives true Christianity its
joy and power:

[T]he sacerdotal system separates the soul from direct
contact with and immediate dependence upon God the Holy Spirit as the source of
all its gracious activities. . . . The Church, the means of grace, take the
place of God the Holy Spirit in the thought of the Christian, and he thus loses
all the joy and power which come from conscious direct communion with God. It
makes every difference to the religious life, and every difference to the
comfort and assurance of the religious hope, whether we are consciously
dependent upon instrumentalities of grace, or upon God the Lord himself,
experienced as personally present to our souls, working salvation in his loving
grace. The two types of piety, fostered by dependence on instrumentalities of
grace and by conscious communion with God the Holy Spirit as a personal
Saviour, are utterly different, and the difference from the point of view of
vital religion is not favorable to sacerdotalism. It is in the interests of
vital religion, therefore, that the Protestant spirit repudiates sacerdotalism.
And it is this repudiation which constitutes the very essence of
evangelicalism. Precisely what evangelical religion means is immediate
dependence of the soul on God and on God alone for salvation.[14]

Keswick teaching on prayer and
fellowship with God added nothing to the store of Biblical truth already
possessed and treasured by traditional evangelical piety.

Warfield
taught that the believer must be filled with and empowered by the Spirit—the
Spirit-filled life was the goal of Apostolic piety, and it was the goal towards
which the Princeton theologian likewise pointed men:

It is only in our Head that the victory is now
complete: in us who are members, it appears as yet only in part: and it is only
when we put off our flesh, according to which we are liable to infirmity, that
we shall be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.[15]

On the basis of this great declaration the Apostle erects,
then, his exhortation. Nor is he content to leave it in a negative, or merely
inferential form. In the accomplishment of the Spirit-filled life he sees the
goal, and he speaks it out in a final urgency of exhortation into which he
compresses the whole matter: “Having, therefore, such promises as these (note the emphasis), beloved,” he
says, “let us purify ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit and
perfect holiness in the fear of God.” It is perfection, we perceive, that the
Apostle is after for his followers; and he does not hesitate to raise this
standard before the eyes of his readers as their greatest incitement to effort.
They must not be content with a moderate attainment in the Christian life. They
must not say to themselves, O, I guess I am Christian enough, although I’m not
too good to do as other men do. They must, as they have begun in the Spirit,
not finish in the flesh; but must go on unto perfection.[16]

The work of the Holy Spirit is
absolutely essential in every aspect of salvation:

Let us remind ourselves moreover that the matters
which fall under discussion here are of the order of what the Bible calls
“things of the Spirit,” things which are not to be had at all except as
imparted by the Holy Ghost; and that it is therefore peculiarly infelicitous to
speak of them as “attainable,” merely on the ground of “natural ability.” In so
speaking of them, we seem gravely in danger of forgetting the dreadful evil of
sin as the corruption of our whole nature, and the absolute need of the
Spirit’s free action in recovering us from this corruption. The unregenerate
man cannot believe; the regenerate man cannot be perfect; because these things
are not the proper product of their efforts in any case but are conferred by
the Spirit, and by the Spirit alone. . . . The Scriptures do not . . . subordinate
the Spirit’s action to that of man; they do not think of the gifts of the
Spirit as “attained,” but as “conferred.” . . . [We] rightly emphasiz[e] the
supernatural nature of sanctification, as of regeneration, and of salvation at
large. We do not sanctify ourselves by our own power; we do not even sanctify
ourselves by using the Spirit as the instrument by which alone we can
accomplish this great result. It is God who sanctifies us; and our activities
are consequent at every step on His, not His on ours. . . . [We ought to] rise
to the height of the Scriptural supernaturalness of sanctification . . . [and]
recognize[e] the supernaturalness of the actual process of the sanctifying work[.][17]

The old evangelical piety
represented by Warfield taught that believers must not rest satisfied with
moderate Christian attainments, but press on towards the standard of the
absolute perfection of Christ.In this
goal, they must not trust in the flesh, but be filled with the Spirit, for
sanctification is absolutely and utterly dependent upon His work.Keswick contributed no new truth to the old
orthodox piety in these key doctrinal and practical areas.

The
following quotation summarizes the warm evangelical piety that Warfield, as a
representative of old evangelical orthodoxy, embraced, preached, and defended:

[T]he systematic theologian is preeminently a preacher
of the gospel; and the end of his work is obviously not merely the logical
arrangement of the truths which come under his hand, but the moving of men,
through their power, to love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as
themselves; to choose their portion with the Saviour of their souls; to find
and hold Him precious; and to recognize and yield to the sweet influences of
the Holy Spirit whom He has sent. With such truth as this he will not dare to
deal in a cold and merely scientific spirit, but will justly and necessarily
permit its preciousness and its practical destination to determine the spirit
in which he handles it, and to awaken the reverential love with which alone he
should investigate its reciprocal relations. For this he needs to be suffused
at all times with a sense of the unspeakable worth of the revelation which lies
before him as the source of his material, and with the personal bearings of its
separate truths on his own heart and life; he needs to have had and to be
having a full, rich, and deep religious experience of the great doctrines with
which he deals; he needs to be living close to his God, to be resting always on
the bosom of his Redeemer, to be filled at all times with the manifest
influences of the Holy Spirit. The student of systematic theology needs a very
sensitive religious nature, a most thoroughly consecrated heart, and an
outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon him, such as will fill him with that
spiritual discernment, without which all native intellect is in vain. He needs
to be not merely a student, not merely a thinker, not merely a systematizer,
not merely a teacher—he needs to be like the beloved disciple himself in the
highest, truest, and holiest sense, a divine.[18]

Such Christ-centered and
Spirit-dependent spirituality can be found in the hearts and writings of
Baptists and classical evangelicals for centuries before the origination of the
Keswick theology.Both before and after
the rise of the Keswick and Higher Life movements, old evangelical orthodox
spirituality prominently preached and lived by the truths that were also proclaimed
at Keswick.

Keswick’s
advocates and its staunch Baptist and classical evangelical opponents stand in
full agreement upon the need for Christians to seek for close and sweet
communion with Christ by the Spirit.They agree upon the necessity of recognizing the terrible evil of sin,
of living by faith in Christ, of relying on the power of the Spirit, of the
futility of self-dependence, of the need for whole-hearted surrender and
consecration to the Lord, and of the centrality of prayer.Thus, the Biblical truths affirmed at Keswick
were not newly originated by the Convention but were taught and accepted by
countless multitudes during the centuries before it arose and thus by those
with no knowledge of the Keswick theology.What is more, all the truths affirmed at Keswick were warmly defended by
multitudes who passionately opposed the Convention after its origin in the
latter portion of the nineteenth century.Keswick set forth no new truth.

While
Keswick set forth no new truth, it did set forth many errors, both new and
old.While one cannot but rejoice if a
believer’s spiritual life is strengthened on account of the emphasis upon the
tremendous truths set forth in Keswick literature and preaching, the
unscriptural aspects of the Keswick theology are extremely dangerous and must
be avoided.Although the Lord Jesus is
gracious and, in His great love for His yet sinful people, He condescends to
commune with them even when they adopt theological errors, nonetheless the
false teaching mixed with truth at Keswick hinders, rather than furthers,
experiential communion with Jesus Christ by faith.Keswick errors dishonor God the Father,
confuse the work of Christ, grieve the Holy Spirit, and so restrain His work of
shedding abroad the love of God in the Christian’s heart.The believer can learn the fullness of truth
on sanctification from the Bible and from sound, Scripturally-based books that
have no association with the Keswick theology.He would do well to do so, because Keswick promotes pernicious errors.

[18]Pgs.
86-87, Studies in Theology:The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 9,
B. B. Warfield.Bellingham, WA:Logos Bible Software, 2008.As the chapter in this work on the historic
Baptist doctrine of Spirit baptism demonstrates, Warfield’s language of the
outpouring of the Spirit here is not technically accurate.However, his sense of and expressed need for
the Spirit is indubitably both accurate and highly commendable.

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I got lots of learnin when I was in cemetery. I also gots books I try to read. I has preecht throo most of the books of the Bible spositorally. I is marreed and has 4 youngins---3 is gurlz. Me am indipendint Babtist. Pleeez reed my blog.